Monday, November 1, 2010

Courage the Cowardly Dog Explained

Everyone here loves Courage, but who exactly is he? He's a scared dog that does whatever he can to protect his home, Nowhere.

Where is Nowhere? Is it the place where there is nothing? No one? No hope? Hell?

Courage protects his home and makes sure no one harms Muriel. His master sits in his chair and hates everything and everyone. Whenever something evil comes to attack or rule over Nowhere, Courage fights back. He keeps Muriel safe and Eustace's home from being destroyed.

Muriel always sees a new head on Courage whenever something evil comes to warn her, giving him multiple heads.

Courage will forever stay in Nowhere (Hell) to protect his home, keep Muriel (humanity) safe from evil (Le Quack [greed], Fred [murder], Katz [hate], etc). His master, Eustace (Satan), will rule over and hate all that is Nowhere (Hell).

He is stuck in the middle of Hell and loves his home. He is Cerberus, our courageous, cowardly dog.

Except that they stuck cerberus in the middle of christian mythology not greek which further makes this creepy pasta bit stupid. At least pick one mythology and go with consistencies within that mythology :|

Christianity has no mythology, simply the bible. And actually, Cerberus was a part of ROMAN mythology, not Greek. Well, the Roman's copied the Greeks, but they named the three headed dog of the underworld Cerberus. Go look up ancient mythology pertaining to the River Styx, or go read a book on it. Percy Jackson is also a pretty good reference.

...but Cerberus doesn't protect humanity from any evil. He guards the gates of the underworld to protect it from intrusions. Intrusions made by Demigods and Humans (so he protects the dead FROM humanity.). Also, he's from Greek mythology. So no Satan. Perhaps Hades, but even then it would still be flawed.

I would like to believe that most cartoons have a positive message for children, put in the form of a game (because that's how children learn best).

Humanity is dual, but Muriel is purely good (except when under someone's influence, she never does a bad thing or when transformed). So, rather Eustace and Muriel ARE humanity - they represent the good and bad parts of it. They live in the world (not hell), because they do earthbound things: they go shoping, growing plants, they go out in town (Nowhere even has a mayor). The monsters that courage deals with all the time are difficulties of life. Some stay forever and come back regularly, most of them go away.

The message would be that good is much better protected than bad. Bad always gets punished.

In the Indo-European pagan traditions (Greek, Roman, Norse, etc.), Hell is not a place of punishment, but rather a morally-neutral destination where all souls other than those of persons who died in battle go after they die. It's necessary to protect such a Hell from the living and from demigods because living humans and demigods accessing it would be able to acquire occult knowledge that could throw the stability of the World off kilter. It is necessary to guard against escape from Hell, as the world of the living is not the right place for the dead.

As for Nowhere being in the physical world: symbolism doesn't need to touch every aspect of a story to be present.

As for Eustace's situation in everything, the aforementioned pagan systems did not have a such thing as a Satan-like character. I would totally go along with the line of thought that Eustace should be considered the more malevolent aspect of humanity while Muriel is the more benevolent aspect of humanity, between the two of them forming a complete picture of what humanity is.

Honestly a great pasta. Needs some tweaks and proof. It's not enough to make me fear closing my eyes at night like Smile.jpg or Squidwards Suicide--But overall, pretty legit.However; The creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog was an atheist.Therefore--Half of your argument is valid and the other half is invalid.Otherwise, I love it! :D

There actually is a town called Nowhere, Nevada. If you go there, they have signs that say "You're in the middle of Nowhere." It's appropriate because 1)Nevada has such a small population (five people and a cactus) and 2) It's mostly a hot, dry, dusty, barren landscape. Which sounds a lot like the setting in Courage the Cowardly Dog. Saying that Courage lives in Nowhere, Nevada seems to make quite a bit more sense than calling Eustice satan and Courage Cerberus. Just another theory though I suppose. Haha

I think that Muriel and Eustace had a child but the child died in an accident on the farm, Eustace blamed himself and grew bitter, however he got Muriel Courage as a substitute for their dead child, and Courages helps Muriel deal with the psychological damage, depicted as Courage saving Muriel from the Monsters.

Omg im 9 and it doesnt show the weird dog anymore when I was like 8 or 7, when I got home from school I would just turn on the tv, then I would go to cartoon network and it would be on and when I had to do my homework, I would go it after courage as over

Eustace couldn't be Satan cause he gets hurt and attacked and tourmented by the monsters and evil creatures just as much as anyone else and if he was Satan those such things wouldn't bother him. Just my thought

In my experience, all childhood cartoons end up having a dark or sexual subtext. Us late 80's early 90's kids who grew up with this stuff keep getting our childhood's ruined as we find this stuff that the newer kids pick up right on the spot. these shows are heartwarming and a little scary as kids, and now that the meanings are coning out we can see them from a new perspective.Just saying, don't judge.

I believe that nowhere kansas represents the void that the universe sits in. Muriel Is Good, Eustice evil, good and evil are locked together(married) one cannot exist without the other. Courage represents humanity scared alone trying his best to protect what he loves against all the troubles in a lonely and brutal world.

well about the humanity part although muriel and eustace are all human but there are some things people don't know about the inside of the bagge family's house the whole thing people can know is that eustace has been domestically abusing muriel so many times that courage has been trying to protect muriel from eustace but eustace has been abusing and tormenting courage many times that courage is always keep doing nothing because eustace is always keep making complaints about courage sitting at the house and even keeps forcing muriel to do everything he says and in one episode of the series another character says about her friend being abused by her boyfriend who always treats her like a slave he my kind of guy this is not what anybody shouldn't say if anybody is being abused by another person in the cartoon it says that he is stubborn but in the real world he's not stubborn he's an domestically abusive offender and muriel has always have been staying in an abusive relationship with eustace and courage has always attended to fight back but the entire time he always has been a coward to be staying in an abusive relationship like this never like this